Ubuntu “Mac” Dock

Recently, I’ve been looking around for a good program that replicates the Mac OSX dock.

The first thing I found was a program called Avant Window Navigator. I installed this and although I was reasonably pleased with it, it lacked some important features. These included easy drag and drop onto and off of the dock and also a quick responding intellihide which hides the bar when a window is over it and then shows it again when you move your mouse to the bottom of the screen. Avant Window Navigator was some reason had buggy support for drag and drop and I also had to wait a second or two for the dock to appear when in intellihide mode-rather annoying.

Then I found Docky which promotes itself as “The finest dock no money can buy.” Simply open the Ubuntu Software Center and search for “Docky”. Once you have located it click install and you’re on your way to a better dock.

Unlike AWN (Avant Window Navigator), Docky has seamless drag and drop support and their intellihide feature is perfect. The instant you hover over the bottom of your screen, up pops Docky…very time saving.

Docky allows you to customize the dock by giving 6 theme options, 4 dock hiding modes, variable icon sizes and the option to use “3D Mode”.

It also comes with what it calls “Docklet”-little apps that run in the dock and perform certain tasks such as email alerts, battery moniter, and CPU moniter, among others.

Another thing I found interesting was the ability to add multiple docks with the click of a button. I’m not sure I’d ever use that, but an interesting feature none the less.